Stories of Meaningful Student Involvement

This document presents a general overview of meaningful student involvement in the context of school change efforts, and detailed descriptions of its goals and applications.

Specifically, it includes several short vignettes of what students as researchers, planners, teachers, evaluators, decision-makers, and advocates look like in practice at various schools. Each vignette describes a tool to elicit student voice to address a particular school challenge.

Examples include students from Oakland, California, designing, administering, and analyzing surveys about teaching, counseling, and safety at three high schools; students from Anne Arundel County, Maryland, serving as voting members on the district board of education and all advisory, curriculum, and study committees; students from Portland, Oregon, developing and delivering a successful campaign to secure free public transportation to school for all students eligible for free or reduced-price school meals; students from Puyallup, Washington, co-creating with local educators the mission, guiding principles, and constitution of a new high school; and students from Bear Valley, California, conducting a year-long student-driven research process to explore student views of learning.

Published by Adam Fletcher

Adam is the founding director of SoundOut. An author, speaker and consultant, he has worked with K-12 schools, districts, nonprofits and others for more than 15 years. Learn more about him at http://soundout.org/Adam
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